ARTIFACTS; So History Can Live On, A Pistol Is Returned

By BENJAMIN GIBBERD

Published: June 18, 2006

AT 1 p.m. last Wednesday, the staff of the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site finally achieved closure after 16 years of uncertainty.

In a brief ceremony outside the brick and timber house where Theodore Roosevelt lived from 1885 to 1919, Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.'s New York office, handed over a small steel pistol to Amy Verone, chief of cultural resources at Sagamore Hill. The pistol, which was stolen in 1990 from the site, is believed to be the one that Roosevelt, then a colonel, carried in his historic charge up Kettle Hill in Cuba in 1898 as leader of the Rough Riders volunteer cavalry regiment in the Spanish-American War.

Roosevelt later described how he fired the pistol at several Spanish soldiers and watched as one of them ''doubled up like a jackrabbit.''

Among those present at the ceremony were Phil Schreier, a senior curator of the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Va., which contains weapons owned by Roosevelt, and John McCabe, the historian at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Massachusetts. Ms. Verone had invited Mr. Schreier and Mr. McCabe to help establish the pistol's authenticity, which was done before the ceremony.

The convoluted story of the pistol's return began with a call to the National Parks Service last September from a man who claimed to have been shown it by a friend in Florida. Noreen Hancock, the park ranger at Sagamore Hill who received the call, said that the man, who did not identify himself, ''was very friendly and repeated several times that he felt it was time for the object to come home.'' Ms. Hancock passed him on to Ms. Verone, who referred him to the National Parks Service, which turned the matter over to the F.B.I.

Ms. Verone said it was her understanding from talking to the tipster that there was at least one intermediary between him and the individual who originally stole the gun. ''One of those in-between people showed it to the tipster and his reaction was, 'My God! That's a national treasure,' '' she said. ''Very happily for us, he talked to his friend and his friend agreed to give it to the F.B.I.''

She also said she understood that the weapon was later recovered in Florida. The F.B.I. would not comment on the case, which is still pending a possible criminal prosecution, according to Mr. Mershon.

Ms. Verone, who started working at Sagamore Hill nine months after the pistol was stolen, said she had always believed the crime was one of opportunity rather than premeditated. The glass case that housed the pistol, along with Roosevelt's Rough Rider uniform, sword and spurs, was at least 50 years old at the time of the theft, she said, and was found open and undamaged.

''It was probably someone leaning on the case trying to get a better look, and the latch just gave way,'' Ms. Verone said.

The pistol had been stolen from the case once before, in 1963, when a local teenager removed it and subsequently tossed it into the woods nearby. Commenting on the two thieves, Ms. Verone said, ''Neither were criminal masterminds.''

Ms. Verone said it would be a priority to put the pistol back on view by the end of the summer after some minor repairs. It will be returned to its original holster, currently in storage, and will be displayed alongside Roosevelt's uniform again, this time in an electronically protected case.

Ms. Verone said she did not expect it to be stolen a third time.

Photos: MORE SECURITY -- Above, the case holding Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Rider uniform, where the recovered pistol will go. (Photographs by Vic DeLucia for The New York Times)